Conventionally, in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, micro-processing by lithography using a photoresist has been carried out. The micro-processing is a processing method comprising forming a thin coating of a photoresist on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon wafer or the like, irradiating actinic rays such as ultraviolet rays through a mask pattern on which a pattern for a semiconductor device is depicted, developing it to obtain a photoresist pattern, and etching the substrate using the photoresist pattern as a protective coating, thereby forming fine unevenness corresponding to the pattern on the surface of the substrate.
In recent progress in high integration of semiconductor devices, there has been a tendency that shorter wavelength actinic rays are being used, i.e., ArF excimer laser beam (193 nm) has been taking the place of KrF excimer laser beam (248 nm). Along with this change, influences of random reflection and standing wave of actinic rays from a substrate have become serious problems. Accordingly, it has been widely studied to provide an anti-reflective coating between the photoresist and the substrate (bottom anti-reflective coating) in order to resolve the problem. As the anti-reflective coating, from a viewpoint of easy of use or the like, many considerations have been done on organic anti-reflective coatings (see, for example Patent Document 1).
In recent years, in order to solve interconnection delay that has become clear with miniaturization in pattern rule of semiconductor devices, it has been also considered to use copper as interconnect material, and to apply Dual Damascene process as interconnect forming method on the semiconductor substrate. And, in Dual Damascene process, via holes are formed and an anti-reflective coating is formed on a substrate having a high aspect ratio. Therefore, the anti-reflective coating for use in this process is required to have filling property by which holes can be filled without gap, flattening property by which a flat coating can be formed on the surface of substrate, and the like. However, it is difficult to apply organic material for anti-reflective coating on a substrate having a high aspect ratio, and in recent years, material with particular emphasis on filling property or flattening property has been developed (see, for example Patent Documents 2, 3, 4 and 5).
In addition, in the production of devices such as semiconductor devices, in order to reduce poisoning effect of a photoresist layer induced by a dielectric layer, there is disclosed a method in which a barrier layer formed from a composition containing a crosslinkable polymer and the like is provided between the dielectric layer and the photoresist layer (see, for example Patent Document 6).
As mentioned above, in the recent manufacture of semiconductor devices, in order to attain several effects represented by anti-reflective effect, it comes to provide an organic underlayer coating formed from a composition containing an organic compound between a semiconductor substrate and a photoresist layer, that is, as an underlayer of the photoresist.
On the other hand, the above-mentioned organic underlayer coating is formed by applying an underlayer coating forming composition on a semiconductor substrate, and then heating the semiconductor substrate at a high temperature of about 170° C. to 200° C. Therefore, components with a low molecular weight contained in the underlayer coating forming composition are volatilized or sublimated on heating at the high temperature, and this causes problems that the volatized or sublimated components adhere on peripheral apparatuses and thus the apparatuses are polluted. Further, it becomes problems that the components adhered to the apparatuses fall on the semiconductor substrate and it exerts a harmful influence on patter formation.    Patent Document 1: U.S. Pat. No. 5,919,599    Patent Document 2: JP2000-294504    Patent Document 3: JP2002-47430    Patent Document 4: JP2002-190519    Patent Document 5: WO 02/05035 pamphlet    Patent Document 6: JP2002-128847